Art from discards

Meet Michel Vogel, a French photographer from my own hometown in Alsace, Riedisheim.

I arrived yesterday (after sleepless flights from Washington) and was out on a walkabout with my mom today when we ran into signs for an "international photo exhibit." I thought I'd take a peek, not expecting much, but was very pleasantly surprised. The exhibit drew artists from 50 different countries and the images were quite nice.

What I liked best though, was Michel's solo show. He's been a welder for the past forty years and in the last few of these years, he decided he'd take macro shots of the shavings (aka, discards) from his job. He features them in all sorts of contexts and the shots make for wonderfully creative images. He's passionate both about his 'daytime' job and his newly discovered craft and was fun to talk to.

I know that's probably not the kind of shot you'd expected from my trip back home but I just couldn't resist giving this creative guy a bit of press :)